“Damn baneworm venom…” he cursed, instead pointing the iron at the cut-open parasite. A single shot ripped it in half, a wrathful thundercp eg through these a halls. Thoughts of suicide elicited only fury within Audun, knowing that they were not his own.

  In his state of delirium, desperatioook reason and he left the gun behind in favor of taking up a notebook bound in bck dragonskiook none of his myriad precautions, made none of his myriad preparations, drank none of his myriad warding elixirs. Instead, the delirious aged through the tome until he found the pages which detailed his inplete interpretation of a long-fotten rite.

  In his other haook a great key wrought of bone and inid with gold, its shape blocky aric. With it in harode to the ter of the chamber. which was separated from its remainder by a narroay over a bottomless pit. There an eldritch altar stood, its form being narrow and waist-height with a ft, seven-sided top, in its middle a narrow slot. A keyhole. The heads of seven silver serpents surrouhe altartop’s edge fag inwards, their bodies spiraling down around the altar and into the pit. By the altar’s side waited what was to be his new body, should the ritual e to fruition: A perfect ideal of the human form, muscur, symmetrical, and over two meters tall.

  “O obog, Darkest of the unfathomable Dark Ones, Oldest of the ageless Old Ones! I ighis bea and demand an audience, demand that you fulfill thy a accord! Trespassing the boundaries of mortality, in this great city of Jas’raba where thy kin once ruled, I now brandish Key of Amrakas, a and immortal!

  Holding up the key in an icepick grip, Audun funneled every shred of his immense are might into the artefact. It came abze in a swirling vortex of emerald light, coalesg into its form until only the gemstones along its spines shone, even the slightest motion rending through the veil of reality as if it were paper, f sights inceivable into the wizard’s eyes. He brought the key down upoar, feeling it demand more and more of him, and more he gave. Everything he could, he gave to the key, and his efforts were rewarded by the eruption of an upside-down waterfall all around him. Rising from the bottomless pit surrounding the altar came a flood of eldritch light, an utter bess surrounded in burning outlines of every ceivable and inceivable colour.

  The altar’s serpents sprung to life, winding themselves around Audun’s arm until they reached his shoulder, where they sunk their silver fangs into his flesh. There was n baow.

  The ime obog woke, it was as if it had barely just closed its eyes; less than a moment by the Old God’s reing, a flicker on the ic scale of things.

  There had e the call of another defiant soul. It was the call of one who had already reached greatness, yet now sought to avoid the downfall which his own hands had wrought. The foolish mortal had awoken Jas’raba’s great maery, the World Needle pierg an infinitesimal pio the artificial veil which shielded that world from obog’s grasp. obog had no choice but to react, for it had an accord with Jas’raba’s long-dead builders in exge for receiving its inhabitants’ souls upon their deaths.

  The mortal demanded his soul to be taken from his wretched flesh and pced into a new body by obog’s great hand. A feat as petty as that was well within the Old God’s ability, but… That intation had nothing to do with the exge of a soul from one body to another. Rather, it had been written to facilitate the exge of a soul from this world for a soul from another. Such was the agreement the kings of Jas’raba had fed with obog, and an Old God could not act ter to its own word.

  obog took no exception to fulfilling su erroneous deal. It supposed that, in the end, even the Wizard would get what he wanted in one way. Whether he would like the world he ended up in… obog did not care.

  “Transding beyond worlds, through the howling vortex, let the astral door reveal my chosen fate! Grant me another ce to face the shadow of endless night, o great obog!” so inted Audun Sorun.

  The ground shook underfoot. Instead of what he’d hoped for, Audun received a tsunami of unworldly energies ripping through his form, the Key of Amrakas turning to stone in his hand. Vein-like trails e light spread up his arm, shinih his skin as the ic force flowing through him seared his flesh into something akin to living charcoal. His skied into a wax-like sistend seeped into his robes.

  What took only moments felt like ay; in an instant his very soul was ripped from his body, carried away on the same ic current that deposited a soul from another world into his flesh. He panicked, and in a desperate, animal-like attempt to free himself, the st act of Audun Sorun became reag out for the artificial body… Only to cause its supp guro roll off the ptform. It met its annihition in the wall of iothingness surrounding the ptform, swallowed by obog’s waiting tendrils.

  The chamber fell into darkness, and the altar’s serpents retracted. What was left standing there as the light died down was not a wizard, or even a corpse, but little more than a humanoid co. Skin baked to a hardened shell, the flesh within half-molten, already coalesg into a form fit for its new inhabitant.

  A being corrupted by the touch of an od, suffused with eldritowledge not meant for human minds… And these were not that woman’s most dangerous traits by far.

  It felt like waking up from a bad dream into an ht nightmare. She had felt herself fade out into nothingness. Then, it had been nothing. Now, it was this. The image of that nuclear fireball remained imprinted in her mind’s eye.

  Akaso